This Is the Way
by Min Daae
Summary: In Georgia hunting a skinwalker, Dean saw Sam. AU. Like, really.


_Author's Note: This (weirdly plotty) story has been in the works for just about ever. Finally gave up on poking at it and put an end to its madness. _

* * *

In Georgia hunting a skinwalker, Dean saw Sam.

Specifically, saw him interviewing the witness Dean had been driving to meet, and it had been three and a half years since Dean had heard a word from Sam, since the day he'd taken off for his shiny new college life, and the first thing Dean noticed was that Jesus, Sam had grown. Shot up by at least half a foot, it looked like, and broader in the shoulders, and what the fuck was Sam doing in Georgia, anyway, was he even out of school? (He was wearing a suit, too. Sam, of course, managed to make it look almost natural. Unfair.)

Dean pulled to the curb in a hurry and almost scrambled out of the car, but decided to wait for a moment. Sam handed something that looked like a card to the witness and then turned away. His walk had changed too, Dean noted. More open, his strides longer and – like a hunter, Dean realized. Sam looked like a hunter.

Even back when he had been, Sam had never looked the part. Dean felt a peculiar stir of uneasiness and got out of the car.

"Hey!" he yelled. "Sam!"

Sam's stride hitched. His head turned, and his gaze swept over Dean without even seeming to pause. He kept walking. Dean felt like a bucket of cold water had been suddenly dumped on his head.

It was like Sam hadn't even seen him.

Dean let his hands curl into fists, reaching for and finding anger. Fine. Little bitch. It wasn't just Dean that had never called, after all. Sam had a phone too. And if he was going to be like that, _fine. _Wasn't like Dean and John needed him anyway.

He probably wasn't even here hunting. Just working his white collar job or whatever with his shiny degree.

That theory was busted when Dean ambled up to the door and introduced himself as Agent Ward, only to have the homeowner (husband mysteriously deceased) give him an odd look and a, "You just missed your partner. I told him everything already."

"Huh," said Dean, too taken aback to keep her from gently shutting the door. "Well."

~.~

_After spending the better part of a year tagging after him, two steps behind, it was John Winchester who found Dean, rather than the other way around. Of course. "I need your help on this one," John said. "There's a nest of vampires. Too many to take solo." And only after announcing this did he glance around and add, "Where's your brother?" _

"_Still at school," Dean said shortly. Sam was safer at school. Sam hadn't called once, and after trying to leave him a message when Dean got word of something in Lawrence, Dean discovered that his number had been cancelled. That message was clear enough. Dean wasn't that much of a masochist. "Least, I figure. Nest of vampires, huh? That's what finally brings you out of the woodwork?" _

_Turned out there was a gun. Some kind of hunter myth that could kill anything. Dean would have laughed in anyone else's face, but…_

_Actually, turned out there had been a gun. By the time they got there, it was a crime scene with seven headless bodies and an empty box that had probably held a gun at some point. _

_Dean didn't think he'd ever heard his dad swear that much. _

_~.~  
_

Dean told John about seeing Sam, and about the fact that he'd poached their investigation. John blinked. "Sam's hunting?" He said, and actually sounded incredulous. Dean shrugged one shoulder.

"Sure looks like it, anyway." Dean hesitated, and was relieved, just a little, that he wasn't the one to say, "It'd be good to pool our resources." He did nod, though.

"Can't be too hard to find him," Dean said. "This isn't that big a town." He could be annoyed with Sam and still want to see him. After all, if Sam _was _hunting, it would just be stupid not to join up. Better – safer – to hunt in groups. John had drilled that one into him. Pairs were best, but as long as you trusted your partners…

Sam knew that too. Something was really weird about all of this, and Dean was trying to fit together what it was. The uneasy feeling from before was back, and he couldn't find the anger again.

Sam would have called if something were wrong. Wouldn't he?

Turned out that Dean had spoken too soon about Sam being easy to find, though. He checked in at all the cheap motels, looking for a familiar alias – or an unfamiliar one, for that matter, though Sam was a creature of habit if nothing else. He came up empty on those, and even checked some of the higher end places, just in case. Nothing.

When he got back to the motel, John looked up at him sharply. "When were you going to mention that Sam canceled his phone?" he asked, and Dean was briefly surprised.

"I assumed you knew." John didn't move, and Dean rolled his shoulders back. "He probably just got a new number and never bothered to say. I couldn't find him. Maybe he's sleeping in a car somewhere." Dean smirked, remembering how much Sam had hated their nights in the car when there wasn't money or time to check into a motel. _I don't _fit, _Dean. _He could almost hear his little brother complaining now. No, Sam was somewhere, he'd just gotten less predictable.

His dad, though, was frowning. Stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He nodded at the police scanner on the table. "They found a body. Gunshot wound to the chest."

"The skinwalker?" Dean said, and shook his head. "No way. We hardly even had suspects-"

John's mouth twitched like he didn't want to say what he was saying. "Sammy was always good at working out puzzles. Solving mysteries."

"Why would _Sam _be in Georgia hunting a skinwalker?" Dean wanted to know. For a second, he thought he saw something in John's eyes, a flicker of something like dread.

"I don't know," John said.

~.~

_So it turned out John had gone off the radar because he'd been close on the trail of the thing that'd killed Mary Winchester on the ceiling of Sam's nursery all those years ago. That, of course, was what the Colt had been for. But it was gone now, and try as he might to track it down, all either John or Dean could find was murmurs about some hunter, or demon, or possibly both making waves in the supernatural world._

_So, probably bullshit._

_There were omens in Salvation, Iowa that seemed to suggest something big was coming, but then they were gone as quickly as they came. Something in Chicago that killed two girls, one ripped to shreds and one falling from a tall building. _

"_The reason I caught the trail was because things were getting noisy," John said, one night, poring over his notes for the umpteenth time. "Like something big was about to go down. And now it's just gone quiet. The only thing we have is the damn stories about this ghost hunter moving in and out of towns, there one minute and gone the next." Dean could almost hear his father's teeth grinding. _

"_What if there's something to the stories?" Dean asked, carefully. John just looked at him for a second, and then looked away. _

"_Even hunters have their legends."_

_~.~  
_

The dead body belonged to the skinchanger. Dean called Stanford and identified himself as 'estranged brother seeking sibling.' Not untrue, okay.

Sam Winchester, they told him with some puzzlement, had not been enrolled for more than a year.

Why, Dean had asked, and after a brief pause, the voice on the other end said more quietly:

"Didn't you hear?"

"We've been out of touch for a while."

"This girl…Jessica Moore? She was his girlfriend, I guess, and she died. It looks like he took a leave of absence after and just…never came back."

Oh, god. "How did she die?" Dean asked through his suddenly closing throat.

"There was a fire," the voice said. "In their apartment."

_Sam, _thought Dean, and then his mind went blank. He thought of Sam's eyes sweeping right through him like he wasn't even there. He'd wondered what could make Sam turn around on hunting. He should have known. No one got into hunting without blood.

Dean hung up the phone and found his father watching him.

He swallowed hard. "Dad," he said, cautiously, levelly. "I think we might have a problem." John tensed, visibly. "Sam's not at school," Dean forces out. "He hasn't been for almost a year and a half now. His girlfriend died." He paused. "In a fire."

For a moment, one horrible moment, his father's expression was just _blank. _Awful and empty with a flicker of something like terror, and Dean could get behind that, because _Sam, _he was supposed to be _safe _at least. If he wasn't here, was supposed to be _safe. _

"He's hunting it," John said, and there was something in his voice almost like reluctant admiration. Dean, just for a moment, hated him for it. Because Sam should have called. Sam should have called and asked for help. Sam should have.

"We gotta find him," Dean said, and it wasn't even a question, because if he'd ever had a true north, Sam was it. And John only hesitated a moment before nodding.

~.~

_Demons had gotten scarce. To the point that John said it was almost unnerving, because just a year ago they'd been more prevalent than ever, and to have them all suddenly seem to go underground, or vanish, or something…it was like something had spooked them. _

_Dean didn't really want to think about what kind of thing could spook a demon. _

_They followed a trail of cattle mutilations looking for a demon, and found a vampire hunt. Some other hunter had grabbed it first, though, and he was already done by the time they rolled into town. John didn't seem to like Gordon very much. Was trying not to show it, sure, but Dean knew his dad better than that. _

"_What about this super-hunter, then?" Gordon asked, almost too amiably, over drinks that he'd offered to buy. "Some weird stories about him floating around. Kills demons, they say. And everything else. Thought it might be you, actually, Winchester." Gordon laughed at his own joke. _

_John grunted and looked away, scowling. Dean rested his elbows on the table. "I dunno. What do you think?" He asked._

_Gordon shrugged. "Not sure. I'll tell you this, though: if even half the stories are true, whatever it is, it ain't there are two kinds of things in the world; humans and monsters. So however helpful it is, it crosses my path-" Gordon cocked two fingers in the shape of a gun and mimed firing, then leaned back. "You start looking for grey, Dean-o, you're gonna let a whole lot of things slip through."_

"_Yeah," Dean said, after a glance at his father, brooding and silent where he sipped his drink, "I hear you."_

_~.~  
_

They split up to cover more ground, with agreement to check in regularly. They'd done it before, when there were two hunts to take care of that couldn't wait. Dean didn't like hunting on his own, but he could do it, and it was almost-

Sam had always been his, and privately, Dean hoped that he found his brother first.

Sam had taken out a shapeshifter in St. Louis, Dean discovered, on behalf of a friend. And that was the last time anyone could say for sure that they'd seen him. Rebecca was her name, and she stared at him through a screendoor when he identified himself.

"Winchester?"

"Sam's brother," Dean said, after a moment, and the light of comprehension flooded into her eyes.

"Oh, right! Oh, god," and she suddenly looked very worried, "Is he okay?"

Dean cleared his throat. "I was actually…going to ask you. I haven't seen him for…a while. Trying to track him down."

"He's not back at school?" Rebecca said, and Dean felt his heart sink. A moment later she shook her head and stepped back, opening the door and stepping out. "I haven't seen him since…" she trailed off, and Dean supplied, "The shapeshifter."

Rebecca went a little pale, and nodded. "Yeah. He got Zach out of a murder charge. It was…I don't know. I heard about Jessica, you know? After…it was a couple months after, and I guess he must have heard about it in the papers or something because he hadn't answered any of my emails in ages, people at school – at Stanford, I mean – were kind of freaking out about it because he just took off, didn't tell anyone where he was going or…" She stopped, shook her head. "He seemed a little…weird."

"Weird how?" Dean asked, almost reluctantly. Rebecca wrapped her arms around herself and didn't seem to even realize she was doing it.

"I don't know," she said. "He just...didn't seem like the Sam I remembered."

"Have you heard from him since then?" Dean asked. Rebecca shook her head.

"No," she said. "No one has. I hoped…I hoped he'd gone back to school and was just busy or something, but none of our friends…" She chewed on her lip a little. "Jessica was…they were pretty serious. Like, meant-to-be serious. Her dying like that…"

Dean knew what that could do to someone. He'd seen it before. He swallowed hard. "Thanks," he said. "I'll let you know if I find anything," and left in a hurry, trying not to think about Dad in those first years Dean remembered, desperate and hollow-eyed and unstoppable. But worse, because this was –

This was Sam.

* * *

It was completely by chance that Dean came across Sam when he was walking back from a bar in some podunk town in Montana. He was just leaving when something caught his eye and he turned just in time to see Sam looking back at him, bag slung over his shoulder.

For a couple seconds, he didn't even get what he was seeing, just gaped in confusion. Sam looked right back at him, and seemed actually surprised. In the streetlights' glow, Sam looked taller. Bulkier, too, not the scrawny kid he'd been. But there was something about his face, different from how it had been in Georgia. More gaunt, dark circles around his eyes. He looked – Dean realized, he looked scared.

Just for a moment, and then his face was blank again, just as Dean was starting to move. "Holy fuck, Sam," he said, and Sam took a step back and said, "Stop."

Dean stopped, then blinked, wondering why he had. Sam was looking at him strangely, almost longingly. Then he took another step back and his expression seemed to harden. "Turn around," he said. "Go back to your motel. Sleep."

_What the hell, _Dean wanted to say, but his mouth said, "Okay," and he was nodding agreeably. He was pretty tired. It was a good thing the motel was close.

Sam took another step back. "I'm sorry, Dean," he said, and sounded like he meant it, too. Dean nodded to that, too. "Just go. It's okay. Just go."

When Dean blinked, he was standing in front of the door to his motel room. It took him a moment to understand what had happened, and once he did, he wheeled around, as if Sam would still be there. He wasn't. "Fuck!" Dean said, and then again, just for emphasis. "_Fuck!_"

Sam didn't have Jedi mind powers. _Humans _didn't have Jedi mind powers.

Fuck, _Sam. _

He did the only thing he could think to do and called John. Stumbled over finding the words to tell him what had happened. John went quiet for a long time. Said, "Dean," and then went quiet again. "I'll meet you in a week," he said, finally. "I have to check something."

The line clicked dead, and Dean stared at it, anything but reassured, and ground his teeth together.

~.~

_The worst thing was that it made a twisted, awful kind of sense. Sam had always been single-minded about things. When he got his focus, it was fearsome to watch. So it figured that once Sam found something to motivate him (dead girlfriend) he would be pretty fucking unstoppable. _

_He and John shared a kind of perfectionism, after all. _

_But _focus _and _motivation _did not tend to give anyone superpowers. _

_Dean was trying not to put too much into the idea that Sam might be the ghost hunter they'd been hearing traces of for months. Trying not to jump to that conclusion. It was still there, though, in the back of his mind. _

Sammy, what are you doing? _Dean asked himself, chasing wisps of air that led to dead ends, and sometimes he wondered if he hadn't dreamed that encounter in a parking lot and never had seen Sam at all. _

_~.~  
_

John didn't call back.

Not right away, and not for two days, and then not for three. He wasn't picking up his phone. Getting progressively more frantic, John finally called on the fourth day and said, simply, "It's Sam."

For a second, Dean heard _Sam's dead _or _I found Sam _in equal measures, and all he managed was, "What?"

"What you saw. It's Sam. Least, probably. Not a shapeshifter or a demon."

_What _I saw? Dean thought, but didn't question the phrasing. His head was trying to spin. "Okay, yeah, how do you figure? And how did he-"

"Something's coming," said John, cutting him off. "You'd best keep an eye out, Dean."

"Should we meet up or something?" Dean suggested, the hair on the back of his neck trying to prickle up. There was a moment of silence.

"No," said John, finally. "We should keep our distance, least for the next little while. I have a few more leads I want to try to hunt down."

And then he hung up. Dean stared at the phone in near disbelief for a couple seconds before he returned the favor, and set it down slowly. Something was going on that someone wasn't telling him about. Something it looked like Sam might be right in the middle of.

And Dean didn't even know where he was.

Well, this was what he was supposed to be good at, right? Finding things that didn't want to be found. And he knew Sam. (Determinedly ignored the voice in the back of his head that said, _maybe you don't anymore. _

_~.~  
_

_Sometimes, when Dean was in some nowhere town, out of leads and out of energy, he thought if he ever saw Sam again he would kill the little bitch before he could open his mouth. Fuck explanations and rationalizations, Sam would deserve it. _

_Those times, he spent the night in a bar drinking himself stupid and going over every inch and second of the conversation in the parking lot. Sam had _apologized _and then sent Dean off like he was some kid who needed to be protected (that had always been Sam). That was always where it started. _

_And then he would think about that brief flicker of fear that his brother's face had showed, just for a moment. _

_What was Sam afraid of? _

_Was Sam afraid of _him?

~.~

Dean found the first demon in months in a diner in Montana entirely by accident. He was waiting for a coffee, half asleep, and one of the waitresses wiping down the table glanced up and froze. Dean caught her eyes, and entirely on instinct (not sure why he did) said, "Christo."

Her eyes flashed black, and then she bolted out the front door. Dean was only a second behind her, and he caught up to her only a few steps out the door, grabbed her wrist and snarled, "Smoking out already, bitch?"

Her head jerked back and a black cloud poured from her mouth into the sky without striking out at him once, and Dean was left catching the poor girl as she dropped like a puppet with her strings cut. Still alive, thank god. That was something.

He left her before someone came out and figured something was going on that wasn't. That was not the reaction he'd expected. It was like she'd been scared of him, doing her best to get away as quickly as possible, and after so long of no demons at all, that almost made him more nervous.

In the middle of the night, he rolled over and found Sam sitting on the bed watching him, hands dangling between his legs. He looked even more worn than he had the last time Dean'd seen him, face almost gaunt and eyes sunk back into dark circles. "Muh?" said Dean, not quite awake.

"Hey Dean," said Sam, voice low and rustly and quiet. "It's okay. It'll be over soon."

By the time Dean was fully awake, the room was empty and the salt line was undisturbed, so Dean chalked it up to a dream, turned over and went back to sleep.

~.~

_Dean had never before realized how easy tracking most of the supernatural things they hunted actually was. They left trails. Signs. Clear patterns. Ghost was all wrong, because ghosts you could predict. _

_Sam was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and honestly Dean wished that maybe Sam had forgotten a little more during his stint at normal , cause he was making himself damn hard to track. Dean tried to get out the word that he was looking for his brother, on the off chance that Sam was communicating with someone else in the hunter network, but nothing._

_Three months of dead ends and no calls from John, Dean ended up at Bobby Singer's place in South Dakota, where to his surprise the hunter he remembered as what Sam would have called 'curmudgeonly' tugged him into a hug. _

_Brief and most assuredly manly, but still._

"_Damn, boy," he said. "It's good to see you. Just because your dad is an ass doesn't mean you get to quit dropping by."_

_Bobby had him in for a beer, and then another, and before too long Dean was halfway to tipsy and spilling his guts about everything that was going on, and the frown between Bobby's eyebrows just got deeper and deeper by the minute. _

_When Dean was finally done, Bobby leaned forward and asked, calmly, "Here's the question, Dean – do you think Sam's in trouble or just plain trouble?" _

_And Dean dropped his head into his hands and answered honestly, "I don't know."_

"_You'd best work that out," Bobby said. "Cause you need to know what you're going to do when you track your brother to ground and work out what he's running from."_

"_He's hunting the demon," Dean said, and Bobby looked at him for a second. _

"_You never go hunting to run from something?"_

_~.~  
_

Five months after the incident at the bar, Dean staggered into his hotel room at the end of a long night of hustling (and still no leads) to find that someone was already there. Man, mid-thirties, but Dean registered the yellow eyes glowing at him in the dark first. "This isn't how this is supposed to go, just so you know," he said, sounding rather peevish. "But maybe there's still a chance at salvaging it."

Dean felt his head hit the wall just after he reached his gun, and then nothing.

When he came back around, it was to find himself sprawled unbound in the corner of what appeared to be a cabin's basement. His head hurt like a motherfucker, and as he tried to look around he could just make out his dad chained to the wall a few feet away, slumped in his chains.

He looked like he was barely breathing.

"Fuck," Dean swore under his breath, and then the man from the motel wandered in, hands in his pockets. He looked like he was trying for casual. To Dean's eye, he was tense. His skin crawled, and he bared his teeth. "So, what," he snapped. "Now you kill us?"

"One of you, anyway," the demon said. "I'm still working out the details. The other one's going to play collateral."

"Collateral for what?" Dean asked, and then the demon's head snapped around and Dean heard it too, a moment later, the sound of footsteps up above. Dean moved for the doorway and without looking at him the yellow-eyed demon stuck out a hand and threw him back to the wall.

"Showtime," he said, sounding like he was trying for gleeful and managing tense. He grabbed a knife from the table and moved back, toward Dean where he was fighting invisible bonds and trying to get a look up the staircase.

Someone was coming down.

Dean had a moment to fall toward the ground before the demon caught him and shoved him around in front, knife blade tight enough to his throat that Dean was breathing carefully, trying to think fast, figure out a way out of this.

And then Sam was standing in the doorway, broad shoulders filling it out. He looked almost painfully thin, but looking at his eyes was what freaked Dean out – flat. Dead. Shut down. Dean froze, wondering abruptly if his situation might have just gotten worse instead of better.

"Heya, Sam," said the yellow-eyed demon, conversational.

"Azazel."

So the thing had a name. Good to know.

"Been a good chase. Let you catch up to me this time, though. Getting a little tired of the status quo, and I thought I'd make you an offer."

The corner of Sam's mouth quirked up. "A deal."

"Sam," Dean started to say, and the knife bit into his throat, just a little. He stopped talking. Sam's eyes didn't even flick in his direction.

"Yes," said Azazel. "Something like that. Here's my offer. Your dad's halfway to dead already. I kill him. You take Dean and never darken my doorway again."

"Or?"

"I kill both of them, and have the everlasting satisfaction of knowing that you can't do a thing about it."

"Or?" Sam said, and Dean blinked, once, but he could feel the demon smirk.

"All right, all right. Final offer. Give me something out of this. You trade in your soul. No ten years, instant swap. Dean and your Dad get to waltz on out of here. Everyone goes home happy."

Sam's expression went slightly more faintly amused. Dean felt sick. _Sam, _he wanted to say. _Sam, what are you doing, come on, make a play, I'll back it, what are you doing. _Forgetting all his doubts, all his suspicions, because this was _Sam._

Sam tilted his head to the side. The movement looked almost stilted, like the memory of human interaction. "You know," he said. "I don't actually think you can offer me anything that I want."

Dean's stomach dropped. He felt the demon go still.

"What?" It said.

Sam smiled, unnatural and full of teeth, and then let it go. "No," said Sam, face cold, calm, and implacable. "It ends here." Dean expected a gun, probably the Colt. He didn't expect Sam to just lift a hand, narrow his eyes, and clench his fingers into a fist. Didn't expect the demon to jerk, knife dropping from its hand, twitching like something something was trying to get out as it let him go.

Dean turned in time to see the surprised look in those yellow eyes, the flashes of light from inside before the demon dropped. Host and demon both dead.

He could still see John's chest rising and falling. Alive, then. All of them, alive, and the yellow-eyed-demon dead, and Sam's expression hadn't changed at all, and _how the fuck had he just-_

Then finally, Sam looked at him. "Is he still alive?" He asked, voice perfectly neutral as he jerked his head in John's direction.

Dean nodded, dumbly, still trying to sort out what exactly had just happened. Sam glanced away.

"Okay," he said. Not even 'good.' Just 'okay.' "There's a hospital a few miles away. You should both go. There's a car parked outside, you can hotwire it." There was a trickle of blood coming from Sam's nose. Sam wiped it away, almost absently.

Dean swallowed hard, suddenly feeling like he'd been thrown out to sea. "Wait," he said, and for a moment could have sworn that Sam's expression spasmed, like he was hurting. "Hold the fuck on-"

Sam was already up the stairs and out the door. Dean heard the car pulling away, and stared, open mouthed, at the light streaming in from upstairs. Then he heard John take a rattling breath and let it out in a moan, and shoved everything down.

Later. Get John to a hospital and then-

-and then.

_Sam._

* * *

_In, maybe, seventh grade, Sam came home asking questions about good and evil. "How do we know that the things we're hunting are bad?" he asked. (Dean, not Dad. Never Dad.)_

"_Because they kill people," Dean said, matter-of-factly. _

_Sam tilted his head. "Is a tiger evil?" _

_Dean blinked. "…where'd that come from?" _

_Sam shrugged. "I mean. Like…kitsunes, right? They have to eat to live, and they have to eat pituitary glands to live. Everything has predators, right? Except people. Tigers eat because they're hungry. Does that make them evil?" _

_Dean was momentarily stymied. Mostly because he wasn't sure he followed Sam's logic at all. "Yeah," he said, "Maybe, probably it doesn't, but – antelope and shit aren't people, Sam."_

_Sam looked more troubled. "What makes them different? I mean – what if this is just…evolution, or something?" _

"_Well, then it sucks," Dean snapped. Sam chewed his lip and looked away. _

"_Yeah," he said. "I know. It's just. I'm not disagreeing. But do you ever wonder if we don't think enough about this? Or if we're thinking about things the wrong way, or something?" _

"_No," said Dean, honestly. "I don't." _

_Sam hadn't seemed terribly pleased with that answer. But that was Sam. He always had to complicate things. _

_~.~  
_

Dean was sitting in the waiting room with a headache fending off nurses trying to get him to lie back and relax and Get Help, seething (_Sam what do you think you're doing what the hell was that) _and worrying _(Sam what do you think you're doing what the hell was that) _and not sure which one was forefront in his mind.

Then he looked up at a prickle on his neck and Sam was standing there, hands in his pockets, looking oddly young. Dean stood up and strode over to him, and Sam flinched back. Dean stopped dead.

"What the fuck," he snarled, making up his mind to go for both, "Do you think you're playing at?"

Sam winced, but he didn't look surprised. Didn't look anything, really. Dean felt his fists clench. "Dad's going to be all right?" he asked, quietly, not answering the question.

"Fine," Dean said shortly. "Sam-"

"It's over," Sam interrupted him. "Dean, okay? It's over now." He half turned. "I should…"

Dean grabbed his arm. He was briefly sickened by what felt like bone right under his fingers. "No," he said. "Don't you dare. I'm not doing anything here. They have my number. We're going to a motel, and you'd better have a good fucking explanation."

~.~

_When Sam was ten, Dean had woken up in the middle of the night to find him sitting out of bed, knees pulled up to his chest and leaning against the wall. Dean blinked at him and rubbed his eyes. _

"_Sammy?" _

"_Hey," Sam said, voice kind of hoarse, and then lifted his eyes and asked, "Dean, did mom die because of me?" _

_For a second, Dean had just gaped, his stomach knotting up. Then he had shoved himself upright and said, vehemently, "No. God, Sam, no, that's not – why would you think that?" Sam shrugged one shoulder and looked back down. Dean hardened his voice. "Sammy. Did someone-"_

"_He didn't mean it," Sam said, after a moment. "I know he didn't mean it. He just…something Dad said. He didn't say it was my fault. He just…" Sam made a small, snuffling sound, trying not to cry. _

_Dean was suddenly and unfamiliarly angry with his dad. "You're right," he said, firmly. "He didn't mean it. People say things when they get mad, and sometimes you make him mad. But it's not true." _

_Sam nodded, just a little. He still sounded like he was trying not to cry. "You don't blame me?" Sam said, looking up through his hair, and Dean squeezed his eyes shut. _

"_No," he said. "No, I don't blame you." _

_It was November 3__rd__. Mary Winchester had been dead for ten years._

_~.~  
_

Sam took him to a motel in silence. He opened the door to a room midway down the line with the same quiet, and waited for Dean to step inside before closing the door.

Dean didn't give him time to set down the keys before he grabbed Sam's shirt and slammed him against the wall. "What the fuck do you think you've been doing?" He snarled. "I've been looking fucking everywhere for you, me and Dad both, after you just up and vanish off of Stanford, something happens you _call, _all right? Did you just _forget _you have a family? And what the shit did you do to me and how did you kill-"

Dean paused when he realized Sam wasn't even trying to push him off or get a word in edgewise or anything. His head was hanging forward and his lips were pressed together in a bloodless line and he looked, Dean realized abruptly, like hell. He stopped. "Hey," he said, finally. Slowly.

Sam shuddered, once, with his whole body. "You're alive," Sam said, voice hoarse, and for the first time Dean could hear something in his voice that wasn't flat, dead, nothing. "I wasn't…I thought I was going to be too late."

"Well," said Dean, the anger coming back. _You _were worried. "You weren't." Sam did that funny little shudder again.

"But it's over," Sam said, went on like he hadn't even heard. "He's dead. It's over."

Dean stepped back a little. "Sam," he said, pitching it somewhere between sharp and concerned, and Sam seemed to fold in on himself, like something had been holding him up from the inside and he'd just lost it. At first it was just a soft, high-pitched keening sound, barely audible, and then Sam took a hitching breath in and just-

One hand groped back to brace against the wall and he slid to the floor, head curling forward toward his knees, little breathless gasps building into crying building into sobbing into something that was almost a howl, and Dean had never seen Sam fall apart like this, _never._

He thought of Sam's face, expressionless as the demon went down for the last time. Thought of the way he'd hardly seemed to notice Dean all that time ago in Georgia.

Winchesters didn't grieve. They got revenge.

Once you had revenge over with, what was left to keep you going? Nothing, and maybe Sam was just realizing that his girl was gone, his girl would always be gone, and he couldn't bring her back.

It sounded like the knowledge was crushing him.

And Sam had sure as fuck done something, Sam had sure as fuck done several somethings that Dean wasn't going to like, but right then, it was just _Sam. _

"Oh, Jesus, Sam," he said, and shifted, not sure what to offer. "I'm – I'm _sorry._"

"You don't know," Sam said, gasping out the words, "You don't know what I've done-"

"I don't care," Dean said, because yeah, right now, he didn't. Later. They could work it out later. "I'm okay. You're okay. Dad's going to be okay."

"Jess," Sam said, voice thick and wet,and choked like he was trying to swallow screams and Dean gave up on restraint and dragged Sam into his arms, felt Sam's head fall on his shoulder even from his taller height, still his little brother.

"Yeah, kid," Dean said. "I know. I _know._"

~.~

_Dean trailed into Sam's room. It was like the quiet after the explosion, and his ears were still ringing. Sam was standing with his back to the door throwing clothes into his duffel, his shoulders up by his ears. Dean stopped in the doorway and looked at him. _

"_Something you want to say?" Sam said, his voice tight like a string. "Something Dad forgot?" _

"_Jesus, Sam," he said. "Did you have to-" He cut off. Sam's shoulders drew up a little further. _

"_You think I was out of line? 'Keep your head down, Sam. Keep your focus, Sam.'I wasn't the one who turned it into a shouting match. Go ahead. Say whatever you're going to say. There's a bus at ten I have to make."_

_Dean felt hopelessly at sea. "You can't just – walk out on your _family._ Dad's just-"_

"_Really?" Sam turned around, finally. His eyes were red-rimmed and his mouth was a flat line. "You're going to defend him?"_

_Dean felt a tiny flash of irritation. "You acted a little like a brat."_

_Sam flushed, and for a moment hurt flashed through his eyes. Then he turned sharply back around, shoving things back in his bag. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You were always Dad's perfect soldier. 'Why can't you be more like Dean, Sam?' I'm not you, okay? I'm not either of you, I don't want the same things-"_

"_Sam," Dean said, before he could think about it too hard (before he could let that hurt). "Do you. Can I give you a ride to the station?" _

_Sam's shoulders slumped. He turned around, slowly, and looked at Dean through his (stupid) shaggy hair, and said, very quietly, "That'd…that'd be great, Dean."_

_Dean shoved his hands in his pockets. "Don't lose your phone, okay?" he said. "Next time I come through California…"_

"_God," Sam said, voice dropping, barely even a whisper. "You'd better." _

_~.~  
_

Sam wore himself out eventually. Fell silent, breathing raggedly against Dean's shoulder until his breathing slowed and Dean could manhandle him over to a bed and get him into it without much argument. Dean sat on the edge of the bed and watched him.

He still looked like a wreck, but some of the tightness, the unnatural stillness, had left his face.

The hospital called a couple hours later to tell him that John was stable and going to pull through, couldn't take visitors yet. Dean stepped outside to take the call and when he stepped back in, looked at Sam twitching slightly on the bed.

_You don't know what I've done, _Sam had said, and now that he had a little distance Dean felt his skin crawl. What had Sam done to him? What had he done to himself?

Dean wasn't looking forward to asking, and knew he had to. Before too long. _It's Sam, _he remembered John saying, all those months ago, grimly, and wondered what his father knew that he'd never said.

All told, Sam slept for four hours before jerking awake with a sharp sound in the back of his throat. When he saw Dean, for a moment he froze, looking very nearly terrified, and then relaxed. Minutely. Or maybe it was just that his shoulders slumped.

"I need an explanation," Dean said, trying to make his voice level. Sam's eyes flickered downward.

"Yeah," he said. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-" He cut off. Took a deep breath. "Dad always said," he said, finally, lowly, "To use the weapons you have."

"Sam."

"Just let me-" Sam glanced away, jerked his head to the side. "Fine. Okay? Fine. Turns out-" His mouth flattened to a line. "Turns out that's me."

Dean blinked, suddenly lost. "What?"

"That's me," Sam said, same flat, toneless voice. "I'm a weapon. Just – supposed to be for the wrong side. Mom died, _Jess _died, because of me. Because Azazel was raising an army."

~.~

_When the phone rang in the middle of a ghost hunt that was so basic it was almost mind-numbingly boring, Dean didn't even bother to look at the number before picking it up. The list of people who called him was, after all, pretty short. _

"_Yeah?" _

_There was a moment's pause, and then, "Dean?" _

_Dean blinked, and did a bit of a double-take, and then dropped the newspaper he'd been half-heartedly reading. "Sam," he said. "Hey!" Two months it'd been, and all of Dean's determination to be pissed off at Sam for not calling sooner evaporated. _

"_Hey," Sam said. He sounded tired, Dean noted critically. Stressed. But not bad. "Sorry it's taken me so long to get in touch with you. It's…it's been crazy. It's not even – it's just _different. _From everything even we've done." He hesitated, and there was something odd in his tone, not quite nervous but verging on it. _

"…_hey," he said, finally. "You okay?" _

"_Yeah," said Sam, after a moment. "Yeah, I'm okay. It's just…I read some article in the newspaper today that sounded kind of…I don't miss hunting. At all. But I missed you. And the other weekend we were watching some dumb horror movie in our dorm and I almost pointed out all the shit they were doing wrong, but…"_

"_Aw, Sam," Dean said, because he felt very briefly heartsick and Winchesters didn't admit to that, not ever. "You're making me blush." _

"_Shut up, asshole," Sam said, but he didn't sound all that sincere about it. "I just…I just worry about you guys. That's all. _

"_Still kicking," Dean said, lightly, and heard Sam breathe out, sharply. _

"_It's weird," Sam said, after a moment. "Being here."_

"_Bad weird?" _

"_No," Sam said, quickly, "No, I want to be here. Just…weird. I keep expecting…it's weird not having you around all the time."_

"_Well," said Dean, after an awkward moment, "If you ever need help picking up chicks, Sammy, you know I'll drop by," and Sam laughed and said, "Fuck you," and the awkwardness was gone. _

"_I'll call you soon," Sam said. "Be careful, all right?" _

"_Yeah," said Dean, and cleared his throat. "You too." Sam laughed again._

"_Really?" he said. "What could possibly happen to me on the Stanford campus?"_

_~.~  
_

Sam had always been good at the research. Putting pieces together, connecting things that didn't seem to make sense. Like precognitive dreams and ceiling fires and twenty-two year long games. When Sam laid it out, it made some kind of goddamn sense. _I was always a weapon, _Sam said. _Ticking time bomb, whatever. I just decided to go off a little sooner than he was expecting, _while Dean was still trying to process _demonic powers. _

"Why didn't you call?" Dean asked, through his daze, and couldn't keep it from coming out slightly indignant. Sam glanced up, his expression darkly amused.

"Why didn't I call when?"

"When – your girlfriend died," Dean said, and watched Sam's expression do a curious spasm. Almost regretted saying it. "Or later on, even-"

"When Jess died," Sam said, "I couldn't think about anything. I couldn't…" His mouth twitched. "I could have stopped it. I shouldn't even have…I should have known. I didn't want to talk to anyone. Later…" Sam tilted his head at Dean, expression sort of odd. "I know the rules, Dean."

"Rules?" Dean said blankly.

"Yeah," Sam said, and tilted his head back. "There are humans. And then there are the things we hunt. No gray."

"I don't," Dean started to say, and the little twist of Sam's mouth stopped him.

"Dean," Sam said quietly. "You're not stupid. I'm not exactly human. I didn't call you because I didn't want you to have to make a choice. I took the road I had to because I didn't care what that made me. I still don't, not if it means Azazel is dead and you guys are alive. But that doesn't make it right. That doesn't make it okay."

It was starting to come together in Dean's head, and he didn't like the picture that was forming.

"I told you, Dean," Sam went on, implacable. "I'm a weapon for a demonic war. I turned that around on him, but that doesn't make me something else. I'm pretty sure John knows, and now you do too. So what now?"

Dean stared blankly at Sam, and finally managed to say, "What?"

"What now," Sam repeated, and there was something heavy, exhausted, resigned in his voice. "What are you going to do?"

Something about the way Sam was looking at him clicked. _There's human, and then there's the things we hunt, _he'd said, and _I didn't want you to have to make a choice. _The brief flash of fear in Sam's eyes in that parking lot so long ago.

Sam thought-

"Fuck you," Dean said, abruptly, ferociously. "That's not – _that's not how this works,_" and finally, _finally, _Sam looked surprised.

"What's not-"

"Don't get me wrong," Dean said harshly, crowding into Sam's space. "I'm pissed at you, yeah sure. I'm pissed at you for not _calling _when you should've. I'm pissed at you for pulling that Jedi-mind-whatever on me. I'm pissed at you for assuming what I would think and making me chase after you for all this time, but you're my brother, and I'm not going to fucking _hunt _you."

Sam blinked once, wide eyed and startled, and Dean made a disgusted noise. "You're a fucking idiot," he said, and considered making excuses, but honestly it would just be a waste of time. He grabbed Sam's shoulders and dragged him into a hug. For a second, Sam just stood there, rigid and unmoving, and then his hands came up slowly and Dean could feel him shaking, ever so slightly, his hands very light, and Dean tightened his grip and held on until Sam was very nearly clinging.

"I missed you," Sam said, muffled, into his shoulder.

"Good," said Dean, after a moment, voice determinedly level. "Cause you owe me a lifetime's supply of pie for this, I swear."

Maybe Sam's brief laugh was a little wet. They both pretended it wasn't.

Eventually they'd have to leave this room and face John, Dean knew, and face everything else, but for now it was just okay to be here, him and Sam. Just them.

Just for now.


End file.
